


Four Times Sam Gets Sick (and One Time He Doesn't)

by Kroki_Refur



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-26
Updated: 2007-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27557059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kroki_Refur/pseuds/Kroki_Refur
Summary: The title says it all.
Kudos: 6





	Four Times Sam Gets Sick (and One Time He Doesn't)

The first time Sammy gets sick, they’re in Thurston, Ohio.

It’s not the first time, Dean knows that, because Sammy was sick before (before), he remembers the way Mommy was always upstairs and Dad was angry (and maybe scared, except Dean’s not sure he really believes that Dad can be scared). But when Dean is five years old, Sammy gets sick and Mommy’s not there, Mommy’s gone and that’s when Dean knows she isn’t coming back, because people have told him, people seem to always want to tell him she’s not, but when Sammy looks up at him, eyes too bright and face flushed with fever, when Sammy’s sick and Mommy doesn’t come, that’s when Dean knows.

Dad’s angry, just like last time (Dad’s always angry these days), but he says that Sammy’s only a little bit sick, that he’ll get over it. Dean wants to sleep in the bed with Sammy, to make sure Sammy’s OK (because Mommy can’t do it, not any more), but Dad won’t let him, he says he doesn’t want Dean getting sick, too (the last thing I need is two sick kids on my hands).

When Dad’s asleep, Dean creeps over to the bed. Sammy’s awake, and when Dean holds out his hand, Sammy grabs his finger, wraps his hot palm around it and squeezes until it hurts a little. Dean ignores the pain, because Mommy’s not coming back, but Dean’s here, and that's all there is, now, that’s got to be enough.

\----

When Sam’s fifteen, he fucks up on a hunt and gets his stomach ripped up like tissue paper. Dean doesn’t really remember the ride to Bobby’s house, and what he does remember comes in snatches, the noise Sam makes when the Impala hits a pothole (the way he stops making it after thirty minutes), the warmth of Sam’s blood against his skin, how scared, how fucking terrified Dad looks. The night’s like that too in Dean’s mind, snapshots of Dad and Bobby (Sam Sam Sam), bile and blood and tears that he doesn’t even know for sure that he shed. Dean just doesn’t really remember it.

Two weeks later, Sam’s barely on his feet again and he gets jumped by some kids in a tiny Minnesota town where there’s been a string of weird disappearances. The disappearances are a serial killer, and the kids are rich and bored and have nothing better to do. Sam gets a concussion, his stitches get torn, and the gashes in his stomach get infected because he spends two hours unconscious in a muddy ditch before finally getting it together enough to call for help. Dean remembers seeing a bundle of dirty clothes on the side of the road in the fading light and thinking that’s my brother, that’s my Sam.

Sam spends five days puking and sweating and raving, and Dean almost gets his fingers bitten off trying to forcefeed him antibiotics. They can’t go to a hospital because Sam’s stomach has been torn to shreds and there’s no explaining that, there’s no explaining it because it couldn’t happen by chance, probably couldn’t happen at all. Dad researches and drinks, and when Sam locks glazed eyes on his and says you killed my mother, he grabs his coat and goes out. Dean stays up all night, listens to Sam’s babbling, waits for Dad to come back. He doesn’t forget a single moment.

\----

When Sam’s in his first year at college, he gets meningitis. Dean finds out because Sam’s roommate calls him looking for Sam’s family.

Dad’s still reacting badly to even hearing Sam’s name, and he’s incommunicado anyway, hunting somewhere in the desert. It’s seven hundred miles from where Dean is to Palo Alto, and he makes it in just over eight hours.

The thing Dean notices most, the only thing he really notices at all through the haze of waiting and too early to tell and are you the next of kin?, is that Sam has a lot of friends. Some of them are distributed around the waiting room, others calling to check every hour or coming by in person, worried, hugging, the girls holding hands and crying. Dean’s the one the doctors come to, though, and for once his real name, his own ID is the one that gets him the in, but he’s really in no fit state to enjoy it. The friends whisper, look at him out of the corners of their eyes; once, a girl comes towards him like she’s going to ask something, but she must see something in Dean’s face that she doesn’t like, because she backs off again, silent and pale.

When the doctor tells him Sam’s going to pull through fine, Dean leaves without a word and drives the seven hundred miles back. It takes him three days.

\----

Somewhere in Colorado, Sam pulls the car over and throws up all over the verge. It’s the third time they’ve passed through the state since Jess died, but Dean still thinks Colorado and Sam’s hurting in the same breath, so he’s out of the passenger seat and round before Sam’s finished gagging, lifting his brother’s head up, checking his eyes, his temperature. Sam stares at him from under sweaty bangs and pukes down the front of Dean’s shirt.

Dean’s put up with a lot from his family over the years, and he’s willing to bet there’s a lot more to come, too. It’s only after it becomes clear that Sam has food poisoning and not smallpox or the plague that Dean extracts a promise from him to do the laundry for two months, starting with the shirt that’s currently stuffed in a plastic bag in Dean’s duffle, covered in half-digested chunks of bad burger. It’s probably not fair to make Sam promise shit when he’s pretty much out of it, but then, whoever said life was fair?

\----

It doesn’t really matter that everybody’s gone, because Sam’s still sick, and that’s plenty of apocalypse right there. He’s stopped crying, now, stopped yelling at Dean, but he’s shut up all together, which Dean thinks is maybe worse.

Sometime around one, Dean thinks this is the last chance I get, and he doesn’t think this was what Dad meant (if you can’t save him), but the end result’s the same either way. There are three bullets in his gun, more than enough, but he wonders if he’ll have the stones to use them, wonders if maybe instead he’ll just let nature run its course, let the sergeant take care of them both when Sam’s done with him. He’s always kinda liked zombie movies, anyway.

Sam’s hunched on the examination table, icepack pressed against the gash on his collarbone, eyes shadowed. Dean sits on a desk and starts talking, and he doesn’t even know what he’s saying, something about some girl he knew in high school and then a joke about a rabbi and a mongoose, and somewhere in there he thinks maybe he explains the quickest way to strip down a Glock, like Sam doesn’t already know that. Dean doesn’t know what he’s saying, but it doesn’t matter, because Sam’s listening, and the line of his shoulders is relaxing, just a little, and Dean doesn’t stop until the sun rises and the doctor comes back in, nervous, to draw Sam’s blood.

It turns out Sam’s not sick after all, and that’s weird, that’s freakin weird, Dean has no idea what that might mean (if you can't save him), but he's pretty sure it's not that Sam has an unusually healthy immune system.

And then again, Sam’s not sick, and for right now, that’s enough.


End file.
